Erik Bird is a sophomore relief pitcher for Nebraska who will contribute a weekly journal to CollegeBaseballInsider.com in 2007. Bird, a native of Omaha, Neb., went 0-2 with a 0.82 ERA as a freshman and becomes closer for the Cornhuskers this year. Opponents hit only .218 and only 2 of 23 inherited runners scored off of him in 2006. Bird's brother Brandon pitched for Creighton and helped the Bluejays to the NCAA tourney in 2005.

 

 

 

March 11, 2007

Road Rage

 

On Thursday, we took a three-hour bus ride from Lincoln to Omaha, which is pretty ridiculous because Omaha is 50 miles away from Lincoln. We had a bad snowstorm Wednesday night that closed the interstates down. It was pretty obvious that we weren’t going to take off on time, but we still drove to Omaha without taking the interstate.

 

They gave us our plane tickets like we were going to fly somewhere, and we sat there for four hours. It was about 4 p.m., and then they decided to cancel our flight. So, we took a two-hour bus drive back to Lincoln.

 

We tried to reschedule for the next day. Thankfully, [Athletic Director] Steve Pederson got us a chartered flight from Lincoln to Orlando on Friday, and we got to the airport and flew to Florida. We got to our hotel, changed clothes and went to practice. Our bus driver missed the turn on the way to the practice and decided to turn on the side of the road and got the bus stuck in some sand, which also was pretty ridiculous. We tried to get the bus out, but that didn't work, so we had to walk to practice.

 

After practice, we walked back to the bus and waited until the tow truck came over and got us out. We got to the hotel, and my roommates and I went to Pizza Hut and they didn’t have pan pizza because they were out of dough. We were ticked off, and didn't understand how a pizza place runs out of dough.

 

On Saturday, we thought we were going to play and we got rained out. It is Saturday night, we traveled 12 hours over two days and haven't played any games yet.


Erik Bird

 

Previous Entries

Feels Like the First Time (3/2/07)

Greetings from the Heartland (2/23/07)

 

(photo courtesy of Nebraska Media Relations Office)